By Myrlia Purcell on
It looks like just playing an angel isn’t enough for Good Omens star Michael Sheen. His human mask has slipped and his true angelic self is shining bright, as he’s using £100,000 of his own money to clear £1 million of debt for 900 people.
The Twilight and Staged star told the BBC that he doesn’t even know who his top secret debt heist has helped.
He added: “I knew where they would live and I knew the kind of debt it was but I would never know who they are and I still don’t know who they are.”
How has he done it? By secretly starting a debt acquisition company, which allowed him to purchase secondary debt, or debt that is bundled and sold on from one firm to another, in a lucrative market worth billions. He explains how it all works in this video on Facebook. Apparently it wasn’t just a secret from the beneficiaries, but also the other debt acquisition firms, who would have disapproved of the generous actions.
WATCH Michael Sheen's Secret Million Pound Giveaway, Monday 10th March at 9PM pic.twitter.com/jeiinFUe64
— Channel 4 Dispatches (@C4Dispatches) March 4, 2025
In 2021, he pledged to use all of the money he earns for good causes, despite his own net worth being fairly modest by today’s wealth standards, at £16 million. He therefore wanted to make sure his efforts have a real impact. Sheen has previously sold his homes to fund people in need, and he knows that if he wants to continue to help people, he needs to be smart about it.
A new Channel 4 show called Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway, follows Sheen’s project to cancel this debt and help those caught up in it.
Along the way, the show will reveal how financial businesses profit from society’s most vulnerable.
“The shocking thing,” says Sheen, “is that people have started having to use credit cards, overdrafts to pay for basics. Y’know, to pay for necessities rather than luxuries or anything like that. So the debt that I was able to buy included credit card debt, overdrafts, car finance, that kind of stuff.”
Those in the UK can catch Michael Sheen’s Secret Million Pound Giveaway tonight, March 10, on Channel 4.
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